CHAPTER XIV
“As if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel.”
Ezekiel x. 10.
Roger’s cheery optimism was an excellent thing in itself. Nevertheless, the best of good-will cannot withstand the logic of hard fact, and prolonged discussion of the means whereby Fra Pietro might be rescued revealed an undertaking bristling with difficulties. After extracting from da Silva all the material information he possessed, they considered a hundred varying expedients, rejecting one proposal after another until they almost despaired of hitting upon any scheme which offered even a remote chance of success.
They took Jai Singh into their confidence. Unless he and his Rajputs yielded willing help it was hard indeed to see what could be done. Two and twenty men, well mounted, might, if fortunate, achieve something: two men alone, with hundreds against them, were utterly powerless.
It was whilst Jai Singh was strenuously opposing Sainton’s suggestion of a direct attack that Walter, inspired by idle chance, hit upon a plan the very daring of which commended itself to them. To be sure, Roger long remained stubborn ere he would agree to it. At last he yielded. Admittedly, the project was a forlorn hope, yet none other they could propound gave such promise of speedy realization, and nothing could shake their resolve that Fra Pietro must be saved.
The horses were quietly disembarked; by present payment, and promise of greater reward, a guide was obtained from the village; and the whole party, less da Silva and three trustworthy men, set off under the starlight to march across country by field paths. The three Rajputs who remained behind were charged to safeguard the boats and prevent any enterprising villager from carrying news to the distant column. Da Silva was left not only because he was paralyzed with fright at the bare thought of falling again into the hands of his captors, but also on account of the suspicion his presence in their company would arouse.
Before daybreak they reached the main road, a dust-laden track with slight pretense to the characteristics of a highway other than the occasional felling of trees and the cutting of an approach wherever the steep banks of a nullah offered a barrier to the passage of a caravan. If it had none of the virtues it held full measure of the vices inseparable from traffic. Though animals alone, camels for the most part, carried Indian merchandise over long distances, the ryots were wont to use heavy two-wheeled carts, drawn by oxen, and the numerous ruts left by these caused the so-called road to bear more semblance to a ploughed field than the land which was actually tilled, as the Indian plough merely scratches the ground and leaves no furrow.
The whole party halted at some distance from the road itself. It was essential that the presence of a body of horse should not be discovered, so, at this point, Mowbray and Sainton bade each other farewell. Never before, during their many wanderings, had they separated in the course of any enterprise which threatened disaster or death.
Walter handed to his disconsolate friend the box of jewels.